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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 12 May 2020
Over the course of the German occupation of the British Channel Islands from 1940 to 1945, a number of letters of denunciation were sent by islanders to the German authorities, accusing fellow islanders of violations of occupation law or of anti-German activity of one sort or another. The German occupiers were ambivalent toward the denunciations. While recognizing their usefulness in maintaining order and the respect for German rule, they found both the letters and their writers distasteful. The local British authorities in Jersey and Guernsey also found the letters problematic; the consequences for the individuals targeted in the letters could be dire, and the impact on island society as a whole was significant, both during the occupation and beyond liberation in May 1945. The extent and nature of resistance and collaboration have been contentious issues in the historiography of the occupation of the Channel Islands, and these letters have been cited as evidence that islanders were unduly cooperative with the Nazis. This article examines the surviving letters of denunciation, and by placing them into the wider contexts of Nazi Europe and the historiography of denunciation in totalitarian states, argues that denunciation in the Channel Islands, far from being exceptional, was quite typical of the practice throughout the Nazi empire.
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30 Gellately, “Denunciation as a Subject of Historical Research,” 27.
31 Gellately, 17; Fitzpatrick, “Signals from Below,” 118.
32 Gellately, “Denunciation as a Subject of Historical Research,” 24.
33 Based on an analysis of 1,302 cases of denunciation investigated after the liberation of France. Chassin, “La délation sous l'Occupation dans le Calvados,” 87–88.
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35 Chassin, “La délation sous l'Occupation dans le Calvados,” 78–79. Chassin points out that the figures likely underestimate the actual occurrences of denunciation.
36 Interview with Vernon Le Maistre, Material concerning the German Occupation of the Channel Islands, Imperial War Museum, London (hereafter IWM), D 5750.
37 Albert Lamy, “Policing during the Occupation, 1940–1945,” undated typescript, 14, Material concerning the German Occupation of the Channel Islands, IWM, D 5750.
38 Bell, William M., I Beg to Report: Policing in Guernsey during the German Occupation (Guernsey, 1995)Google Scholar, 224.
39 Fitzpatrick, Everyday Stalinism, 208–9.
40 Lamy, in “Policing during the Occupation,” estimated that half of Guernsey's sixty-four wireless-related convictions were brought about by letters of denunciation. The corresponding figure for radio-related convictions in Jersey is 178. Carr, Sanders, and Willmot, Protest, Defiance and Resistance, 88, 95n149.
41 “Sentences and Prosecutions by the Field Command and Troop Courts,” Jersey Archive (hereafter JA), D/Z/H6/1-9; “Analysis of Some of the Case Files of the Three German Courts, 1944–45,” JA, D/Z/H9/2.
42 Bell, I Beg to Report, 340–41. Guernsey Police logged 2,900 cases of the theft of food in 1944 alone. Lamy, “Policing during the Occupation,” 20.
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44 “Illegal Holding of Wheat, Investigation and Report,” letter from Major Haider to the bailiff of Jersey, 23 December 1943, JA, B/A/W50/131.
45 TNA, KV 4/78, “The Administration of the Channel Islands under the German Occupation”; TNA, ADM 223/288, Operation HARDTACK: Intelligence reports about Guernsey. French farmers were also denounced for diverting produce to retailers operating in the black market. Fabrice Grenard, “La dénonciation dans la répression du marché noir,” in Joly, La délation, 139–62, at 145.
46 Gellately, “Denunciation as a Subject of Historical Research,” 25.
47 Fitzpatrick, “Signals from Below,” 110.
48 Grenard, “La dénonciation dans la répression,” 141.
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51 Letter dated 23 January 1945, Police Occurrence Books, no. 118 (22 January 1945 to 10 April 1945), Guernsey Island Archives (hereafter GIA).
52 Letter dated 16 September 1943, in Bell, I Beg to Report, 255.
53 Roodhouse, Black Market Britain, 165; Grenard, “La dénonciation dans la répression,” 148–49.
54 “Originals and copies of notices released by various movements,” JA, L/D/25/A/10. The farmer was indeed a known and convicted black marketeer, but on this occasion, only the wireless was found.
55 Letter dated 25 January 1943, “Requisitioning of wirelesses; requests from persons to keep their wireless sets, JA, D/Z/K29/2.
56 Uncatalogued letter, Jersey War Tunnels Museum, Jersey.
57 Letter dated 16 September 1943, in Bell, I Beg to Report, 256.
58 Williams, “Letters of Denunciation in the Lyons Region,” 152.
59 “Black Market,” 25 May 1945, IWM, Dening Papers, D 13409.
60 Sauteur, Philip Le, Diary of Jersey under the Swastika: A Daily Account, 1940–1945 (Jersey, 2017)Google Scholar, 73 (entry for 18 March 1941).
61 “The Channel Islands under German Occupation,” IWM, Dening Papers, D 13409.
62 Controlling and Essential Commodities Committee files, 19 November 1944, GIA, CC 02-01.
63 Gellately, The Gestapo and German Society: Enforcing Racial Policy, 1933–1945 (Oxford, 1990), 140–42. In a sample of 226 radio cases investigated by the Gestapo, 73 percent began with a denunciation; another study puts the number at 80 percent. Gellately, “Denunciations in Twentieth-Century Germany,” 193.
64 For wireless offenses in the Channel Islands, see Carr, Sanders, and Willmot, Protest, Defiance and Resistance, 65–96.
65 “Sentences and Prosecutions by the Field Command and Troop Courts,” JA, D/Z/H6/1-9; “Analysis of Some of the Case Files of the Three German Courts, 1944–45,” JA, D/Z/H9/2.
66 Carr, Sanders, and Willmot, Protest, Defiance and Resistance, 350–51.
67 Carr, Sanders, and Willmot, 88.
68 Lamy, “Policing during the Occupation,” 14.
69 “Geheime Feldpolizei (Secret Field Police) Guernsey,” IWM, Dening Papers, D 13409.
70 Letter dated 3 August 1942, “Requisitioning of wirelesses; requests from persons to keep their wireless sets,” JA, D/Z/K29/2.
71 Uncatalogued letter, Jersey War Tunnels Museum. In France, letters of denunciation were often signed by “a good Frenchman” or “a Loyal Frenchman.” Ousby, Ian, Occupation: The Ordeal of France 1940–1944 (London, 1999)Google Scholar, 147.
72 Interview with Arthur Kent, Material concerning the German Occupation of the Channel Islands, IWM, D 5750; Quesne, Edward Le, The Occupation of Jersey Day by Day: The Personal Diary of Deputy Edward Le Quesne (Jersey, 1999)Google Scholar, 201 (entry for 9 September 1943).
73 Letter dated 14 December 1944, in Bell, I Beg to Report, 304.
74 Uncatalogued letter, Jersey War Tunnels; “Letter concerning anonymous letters,” 4 August 1943, JA, D/Z/H5/309.
75 Attorney General to the Chef de Police, “Letter concerning anonymous letter,” 14 October 1944, JA, D/Z/H5/387.
76 Letters dated 11 July 1942 and 31 July 1942, “Requisitioning of wirelesses; requests from persons to keep their wireless sets,” JA, D/Z/K29/2.
77 Uncatalogued letters, Jersey War Tunnels Museum.
78 Letter from S. G. Crill, Constable of St. Clement, to the Attorney General, 27 April 1942, JA, B/A/W50/49; Lamy, “Policing during the Occupation,” 14. In Calvados, there were occasional enquiries made after the Liberation into the authors of anonymous letters. Chassin, “La délation sous l'Occupation dans le Calvados,” 79.
79 TNA, KV 4/78, “The I(b) Reports on the Channel Islands,” 8 August 1945, 6.
80 Vladimir Kozlov, “Denunciation and Its Functions in Soviet Governance: A Study of Denunciations and Their Bureaucratic Handling from Soviet Police Archives, 1944–1953,” in Fitzpatrick and Gellately, Accusatory Practices, 121–52, at 131; John Connelly, “The Uses of Volksgemeinschaft,” 182–84.
81 Laurent Joly, introduction to Joly, La délation, 17–69, at 53–54.
82 “Requisitioning—Wirelesses,” 11 July 1942 and 31 July 1942, JA, D/Z/K29/2.
83 Letter of Attorney General to Chef de Police, “Letter concerning anonymous letters,” 14 October 1944, JA, D/Z/H5/387.
84 Letter of Attorney General to Chef de Police, “Letter concerning anonymous letters,” August 1943, JA, D/Z/H5/309.
85 Bell, I Beg to Report, 255.
86 Notice dated 8 December 1942, “Requisitioning of wirelesses; requests from persons to keep their wireless sets,” JA, D/Z/K29/2.
87 Letter dated 15 March 1943, “Requisitioning of wirelesses; requests from persons to keep their wireless sets,” JA, D/Z/K29/2.
88 Fitzpatrick, “Signals from Below,” 110.
89 Sanders, British Channel Islands under German Occupation, 135–41.
90 In her study of denunciation in Calvados, Julie Chassin asks if it was enough just to have the victim brought to the attention of the authorities. Chassin, “La délation sous l'Occupation dans le Calvados,” 92.
91 Gilly Carr, “Julia Barry (née Brichta)”, Frank Falla Archive online: https://www.frankfallaarchive.org/people/julia-barry/, accessed 3rd February 2020.
92 Letter dated 16 September 1943, in Bell, I Beg to Report, 255.
93 Letter dated 30 September 1943, in Bell, 256.
94 Among the leaderships of both Nazi Germany and the German Democratic Republic, “denunciations were understood in official discourse as mean-spirited, base, personal, selfish, or even knowingly false.” Gellately, “Denunciation as a Subject of Historical Research,” 17.
95 Gellately, “‘A Monstrous Uneasiness,’” 182–83.
96 Fogg, “Denunciations, Community Outsiders,” 272, 275.
97 Fogg, 277.
98 Williams, “Letters of Denunciation in the Lyons Region,” 150–51. The prefect of Lot published a notice in the press in November 1941 to the effect that all anonymous letters would be ignored and enquiries would be made to find the authors. Joly, introduction to La délation, 42–43. Rhone authorities also tried to discourage the practice by publishing a notice in newspapers stating that no anonymous letter would be acted upon. Benn E. Williams, “Dénoncer les délateurs: l’épuration dans le Rhône, 1944–1953” in Joly, La délation, 307–20, at 312–13.
99 Joly, introduction to La délation, 31.
100 Gellately, “‘Monstrous Uneasiness,’” 183.
101 Jersey Evening Post, 14 July 1941.
102 Letters dated March 1942, JA, B/A/W50/49.
103 “Requisitioning of wirelesses; requests from persons to keep their wireless sets,” Letter dated 11 July 1942, JA, D/Z/K29/2.
104 Transcript of submission of Lily Mauger, 2005, BBC, WW2 People's War Project, Guernsey Museum and Art Gallery.
105 Lamy, “Policing during the Occupation,” 20.
106 Lamy, 14.
107 Interview with Francis Le Cocq, Guernsey, IWM Sound Archive, no. 11373.
108 Interview with W. Hagedorne, Material concerning the German Occupation of the Channel Islands, IWM, D 5750.
109 Such as that from the nonexistent G A Tippett in Guernsey; see letter dated 14 December 1944, in Bell, I Beg to Report, 304, or the accusation against a Jersey farmer, letter dated March 1942, JA, B/A/W50/49.
110 “Letter concerning anonymous letters,” August 1943, JA, D/Z/H5/309.
111 Willmot, Louise, “‘Nothing Was Ever the Same Again’: Public Attitudes in the Occupied Channel Islands, 1942,” Local Historian 35, no. 1 (2005): 9–20Google Scholar.
112 “Letter concerning anonymous letters,” August 1943, JA, D/Z/H5/309; Sanders, British Channel Islands under German Occupation, 66.
113 For Duret Aubin's failure to question German demands, see Sanders, British Channel Islands under German Occupation, 63–66; Sanders, Paul, The Ultimate Sacrifice: The Jersey Twenty and Their “Offences against the Occupying Authorities,” 1940–1945, 3rd ed. (Jersey, 2018), 32–35Google Scholar, 120–21.
114 For the V-sign campaign, see Cruickshank, Charles, The Fourth Arm: Psychological Warfare, 1938–1945 (London, 1977)Google Scholar, 121–28. For the V-sign campaign in the Channel Islands, see Carr, Sanders, and Willmot, Protest, Defiance and Resistance, 43–64; Carr, Gilly, “The Archaeology of Occupation and the V-Sign Campaign in the Occupied British Channel Islands,” International Journal of Historical Archaeology 14, no. 4 (2010): 575–92CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
115 For example, Lillian Kinnard and Kathleen Norman were sentenced by the court of Feldkommandantur 515 on 24 July 1941 to nine months’ imprisonment for the “spreading of propaganda hostile to Germany.” They were released on condition of their good behavior on 8 February 1942. Sentences and Prosecutions by the Field Command Court, case no. 20, JA, D/Z/H6/2.
116 Correspondence between Carey and Feldkommandantur 515, 8 July 1941, GIA, CC 09-02.
117 Correspondence between Carey and Sculpher, 4–12 July 1941, GIA, CC 09-02; German Occupation—Island Offences, GIA, CC-EC 6-7.
118 Bell, I Beg to Report, 224. This practice was also found in France; an officer of the Sûreté had so little truck with anonymous letters that he made a habit of throwing those he received into the bin, only investigating those passed down from a higher authority. Williams, “Letters of Denunciation in the Lyons Region,” 150–51.
119 Bell, I Beg to Report, 224.
120 Interview with Percival Preston, 13 January 1997, IWM Sound Archive, no. 17238; Sinel, L[eslie] P., The German Occupation of Jersey: The Wartime Diary of Leslie Sinel (St. Helier, 1995)Google Scholar, 130 (entry for 26 February 1943); interview with Frank Connor, Material concerning the German Occupation of the Channel Islands, IWM, D 5750.
121 Frommer, National Cleansing, 146; Joly, introduction to La délation, 19; Chassin, “La délation sous l'Occupation dans le Calvados,” 93.
122 For details of islanders who served sentences in Nazi prisons and concentration camps on the continent, see the Frank Falla Archive online, https://www.frankfallaarchive.org/.
123 Sanders, Ultimate Sacrifice, 47–67.
124 Fogg, “Denunciations, Community Outsiders,” 274, 275.
125 Papers of Mr. and Mrs. R. Foley, IWM, D 16858.
126 Le Quesne, Occupation of Jersey Day by Day, 4 (entry for 4 June 1941).
127 Interview with Edwin De Sainte Croix, IWM Sound Archive, D 10103; interview with Dorothy Blackwell, IWM Sound Archive, D 10876.
128 Deslandes, Winifred, “The Diary of Mary Winifred Deslandes, June 1940 to May 1945,” in De Carteret, B. E., Robin, Mary, and Deslandes, Winifred, An Island Trilogy (Jersey, 1995)Google Scholar, at 55 (entry for 10 September 1942).
129 A play of words on embaucher, to hire, and Boche, a derogatory term for Germans.
130 Williams, “Dénoncer les délateurs,” 308.
131 Williams, 307.
132 Chassin, “La délation sous l'Occupation dans le Calvados,” 98.
133 Frommer, National Cleansing, 181.
134 Chassin, “La délation sous l'Occupation dans le Calvados,” 97.
135 Sinel, German Occupation of Jersey, 229 (entry for 12 September 1944).
136 TNA, KV 4/78, Letter from Major d'Egville to Major Stopford, 8 July 1945.
137 TNA, HO 45/22399, Letter of Brigadier Snow to Sir Frank Newsam of the Home Office, 24 August 1945.
138 “Loyalist,” letter to the editor, Jersey Evening Post, 26 May 1945.
139 “Plain Justice, letter to the editor, Jersey Evening Post, 19 May 1945.
140 For a full narrative of the discussion and decisions taken after the Liberation with regard to collaboration, see Sanders, British Channel Islands under German Occupation, 231–54.
141 TNA, KV 4/78, “The I(b) Reports on the Channel Islands,” letter from Stopford to Dening, 3 July 1945.
